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Last month I had the opportunity to join a bipartisan faith-based pilgrimage to New York City to study up close aspects of the history of immigration in the United States. On the way to a stop on Ellis Island, I was struck by the majesty of the Statue of Liberty and how it would be the first sight immigrants would see after weeks or even months at sea. This first vision of the U.S. represented a new life filled with hope, freedom, and opportunity.

Today, more than 125 years after that statue first became a symbol of hope for people coming to start a new life, that dream is still alive in this nation of immigrants. And here along the Central Coast, that dream remains alive for the nearly one in five residents who were born outside the United States. From our rich agricultural fields to our high tech companies, immigrants play an important role in our local economy while remaining hopeful that one day they can become citizens of the country they call home.

Our nation’s strong immigrant history is one we can all be proud of. But our current immigration system is broken, and it’s holding our country and our economy back.

For example, many people come to our country as students to receive a high-quality education. At UCSB, a world-class research institute, we are training the best and brightest in some of the most advanced technologies in the world. We nurture them. We invest in them. But when these students graduate, we often can’t keep them here even when they want to stay.

Why would we train the leaders of tomorrow and then force them to leave? This not only hinders our local economy, but it also hurts our nation’s ability to compete in an ever-competitive global marketplace. We need policies that allow immigrants to not only pursue their education in the United States, especially in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, but to then have the opportunity to stay in the United States to pursue a career or start a business of their own. Many successful American companies like Google, Intel, or even the Central Coast’s own Transphorm have been started by immigrants. This is a resource the United States cannot afford to waste.

In Goleta and all along the Central Coast, we have innovative high-tech companies playing a central role in the growth of our local economy. I’ve met with the leaders of many of these companies and they have shared with me their struggles to retain a competitive workforce due to a frustrating and ineffective immigration system. We need to do everything we can to keep our graduates — to whom we’ve given the tools and the opportunities to succeed — here in our communities. There’s no reason we should continue to train our competitors’ workforce.

That’s why we need comprehensive immigration reform that will allow graduates the opportunity to stay in the United States if they choose and strengthen our workforce and economy. My colleagues in the Senate have already taken steps to advance comprehensive immigration reform farther than it has gone in the past several decades by passing legislation with strong bipartisan support of 68 votes.

That legislation, a product of months of compromise between liberals and conservatives and Republicans and Democrats, would help clear out the backlog of graduates waiting in limbo in our broken immigration system. It would create a duel visa program for students and increase the number of visas for high-skilled workers for future workforce needs, while developing annual immigration caps that take into account industry needs, trends, and unemployment.

It would also provide an expedited path to citizenship for students known as DREAMERs — those who were brought to the United States at a young age and call no other country their home — and creates a pathway to citizenship for other undocumented immigrants who have a clean criminal record, pay any back taxes and fees, and study English. The bill also addresses security along the border and improves our work visa system to address our economic needs down the road. All of these aspects of reform affect one another and highlight the complexities of the issue, which is why we must address all of these issues together in a comprehensive way.

Unfortunately, the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives has been hesitant at best in its approach to the issue, indicating only occasional interest and then only in a piecemeal approach. This is shortsighted and will continue to keep our economy and our neighbors in a place of limbo. That’s why I have been urging them to use the momentum behind the bipartisan Senate immigration reform bill and get to work now on passing comprehensive immigration reform this year. California can’t wait much longer and neither can our country or our economy. It is critical that we don’t let this opportunity slip away to fix a broken system that hurts our economy and thousands of Central Coast families.

Comments

I actually at least partially agree with Lois Capps on this one. We should be attracting the best and the brightest immigrants from all countries. That will be the future of our country. We need to expedite immigraton for those H1B visa applicants with special skills and education as well as keeping those exeptional foreign graduates that were educated here.

However, giving a pass to people that break our laws is no way to run an immigration system. Many people wait their turn, sometimes for ten years or more to come here. It's a slap in the face to those that go through the system to give legal status to those that break the law.

I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but I do believe the house of representatives has agreed in principle (as the should have) to a path for citizenship for those brought here as children through no fault of their own. As far as their parents that brought them here illegally though, they should be returned to their country of origin.

Politicians hide under the moniker of "comprehensive immigration reform". Please Lois, take Steve Job's lead and solve the brain drain problem instead of lumping together the hordes of illegal aliens that have no education or skill set with technically astute people that we need.Everyone knows damn well that by combining these disparate and nearly unrelated groups your are intentionally obfuscating a number of agendas.Both Ellis Island and our own Angel Island serve as testament to the numbers of people that came here legally, including some of my long dead ancestors. Don't dishonor them by throwing them in with people that choose not to go through the process.

In case you haven't noticed, Rep. Capps, it isn't 125 years ago. We no longer need millions of poor, uneducated, unskilled, non-English speakers to help expand our empire from sea to shining sea. The population of the US was only around 50 million when the Statue of Liberty was installed. Today, California alone has almost 40 million people. Another politician bent on destroying our country.

@italiansurg: "Please Lois, take Steve Job's lead and solve the brain drain problem instead of lumping together the hordes of illegal aliens that have no education or skill set with technically astute people that we need."

It's pretty brilliant that you referred to Steve Jobs, given that Jobs' widow has come out in support of the DREAM Act:

ETR - You're making an apples and oranges comparison. Only a very small percentage of illegal aliens will qualify under the dream act. Are you saying that you support deportation of all illegal aliens that don't quality?

If the magnanimous ladies and gentlemen of the US congress hadn't ceded all authority to the Federal Reserve Bank and it's Wall Street counterparts, things might have been different.

The problem is that there is no good work to do for talented engineers, programmers and scientists and they are leaving the country for greener pastures. All new economic growth is in the fields of banking and brokering, which are effectively skimming and scamming and entirely unproductive.

And let me point out now that the new web 2.0 companies like Google and FaceBook are NOT technology companies. It's just advertising.

I know many very talented engineers and they are leaving. There are still a few corners of the world that don't answer to Goldman Sachs.

I agree with Botany's first post. I also agree with ETR's post, which was limited to DREAM and therefore consistent with Botany's post and Capps' Voices piece.

Regarding difficulty in attracting tech workers to the SB/Goleta area ... over 40% of the workers at my tech firm commute from out of the area. Even relatively well-paid tech workers can't afford to live here. This is consistent with the 2010 Census stats that show a decline in the middle class (and associated age groups) on the South Coast.

So this is a multi-faceted issue related to availability of qualified workers, cost of living, availability of affordable housing, etc.

Why aren't we 'investing' in the people already here? They don't invest much in the students at the university, the students actually do the investing (talking about $ here). UC ain't cheap. Yes, 'illegal' (what a way to put it) kids who came here under no choice of their own deserve citizenship, especially the smart ones that do well in school. There is a whole other can of worms attatched that have nothing to do with them. Native brings up some good points. "Why would we train the leaders of tomorrow and then force them to leave?" I have asked 'Why?' too many times over the last 2 decades to the nonsense our government sees fit to participate in. It only makes sense that government policy leads to folly considering how corrupt DC is. All the propaganda might have meant something in the past, "We the people" should now read "We the rich corporations that know better than you so shut up because we have all your life on microfiche". Nobody is completely innocent except the children.

ETR-EVen for you that was a particularly stupid post. Did I reference his widow? Are you somehow implying that he agreed with her and she cannot think for herself. Jobs railed against our immigration policy and not with regards to allowing unskilled, uneducated illegal aliens to break into the U.S. and stay. He specifically and vociferously ranted about his inability to plan a company around having enough technical talent available.

You're right - saying that I agree with you is a pretty stupid move on my part. It won't happen again.

But I do love how you're so blinded by rage that any semblance of a cohesive thought immediately goes out the window.

@italiansurg: " Are you somehow implying that he agreed with her and she cannot think for herself. "

You did not require any assistance from me in exhibiting your own misogyny. Congrats on being able to do something on your own, I guess. You're actually quite good at it.

@italiansurg: "Jobs railed against our immigration policy and not with regards to allowing unskilled, uneducated illegal aliens to break into the U.S. and stay. "

Because Steve Jobs was smart enough to know that it's the children of the 'unskilled,uneducated illegal aliens' (your definition, not mine) that will benefit from policies like the DREAM Act. These kids aren't just magically appearing. This is one step in a much larger solution to a comprehensive immigration.

I think it would be far more honest if you reactionaries just admitted that the only reason you even give a toss about immigration reform at all is because it's starting to cost you big during election time. Nobody buys, for a second, that this is the far-right exhibiting any kind of compassion or empathy.

We have a long history of LEGAL immigration in this country.We have a recent history of overwhelming ILLEGAL immigration to this country.

Mexico and Latin America have a long history of socialist and leftist dictatorships (and variants) with a smattering of right wing murderers as leaders (Pinochet, for example). That world view(take modern Mexico as an example) is not compatible with American exceptional-ism, and a capitalist democracy. Why do you think people are fleeing that part of the world for ours?